Linguistic Morphology

Linguistics 20 Fall 2008 B. Hayes UCLA Readings for Class 1: What is Linguistics?/ Morphology I 1. What this course will be like Linguistics is the science of language; it studies the structure of human languages and aims to develop a general theory of how languages work. The field is surprisingly technical; to describe languages in detail requires a fair amount of formal notation. A good parallel would be the field of symbolic logic, which uses a formal notation to understand the processes of reasoning and argumentation. There are basically three things I hope you will get out of this course. First, there is the subject matter itself, which is useful to know for people many different fields, such as education, psychology, and computation. The course is also an introduction to linguistics for those who are going to major in it. Second, the course involves some mental exercise, involving analysis of data from English and other languages. I doubt that anyone who doesn’t go on in linguistics will remember much of the course material five years after they have graduated, but the analytical skills you will get practice in will be (I hope) both more permanent and more useful. Third, the course is intended to give a more realistic view of science and how it proceeds. The reason we can do this in linguistics is that it is a fairly primitive science, without an enormous body of well-established results. Because of this, we are less interested in teaching you a body of established knowledge; rather, our focus is on teaching you to decide what is right on your own, by looking at the data. All sciences are in this state of uncertainty at their frontiers; linguistics can give you a more authentically scientific experience in a beginning course. 2. Implicit and explicit knowledge of language Linguists are constantly asked the question “How many languages do you speak?” This question is a little irritating, because it is largely irrelevant to what linguists are trying to do. The goals of linguistics are to describe and understand the structure of human languages; to discover the ways in which all languages are alike and the ways in which they may differ. The point is that even if one could speak all 8000 or so of the world’s languages, one would not have solved all the problems of linguistics. The reason is this: speaking a language and knowing its structure are two very different things. In speaking a language, one uses thousands of grammatical rules without being aware of them; they are “unconscious knowledge.” Linguists attempt to make explicit this unconscious knowledge by looking closely at the data of language. That is, they attempt to make the “implicit knowledge” of native speakers into explicit knowledge. What follows are two examples intended Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 2 to persuade you that as a speaker of English you possess grammatical knowledge of which you are not consciously aware. 3. The reference of each other Consider the following facts. In (1), each other refers to we; in (2) it refers to John and Bill, and (3) is a bizarre sentence, in that each other cannot logically refer to I. (1) (2) (3) We like each other. John and Bill like each other. *I like each other. Following standard practice, I will place an asterisk before sentences that are ungrammatical; i.e. that are “not English.” In (3), the ungrammaticality can be traced to the absence of any plausible interpretation for the sentence; since each other describes actions like this: X X Y Y it cannot be used unless the agent of the action is plural. But not all cases can be explained in this way. In (4), you can think of a meaning that the sentence could in principle have, but this meaning is not allowed by the rules of English grammar: (4) (5) *John and Bill think I like each other. We believe they like each other. In other words, being grammatical and having a sensible meaning are two different things. Sentence (5) shows the same thing: you can think up two logically possible meanings, but only one meaning is allowed by the rules of English. This leads to the following basic point: there is some rule of English that accounts for what each other can refer to, but it is a tacit rule. No one can look inside their mind to find out what the rule is; one can only look at the data and try to figure the rule out. Linguists have worked on this particular rule for some time, and have gradually made progress in stating the rule accurately. But we cannot claim to have a final answer. I will present a partial answer here. We will need two preliminary definitions, both of which will come up later on in the course. A clause is, intuitively speaking, either a whole sentence or a sentence within a sentence; it will generally have a subject and a verb or close equivalent. We depict clauses by drawing brackets around them; labeled “S” for “little sentence”. (6) (7) [We like each other.]S [John and Bill like each other.]S Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 3 (8) (9) (10) *[I like each other.]S *[John and Bill think [I like each other.]S]S [We believe [they like each other.]S]S Note that clauses can have clauses inside them. A noun phrase is a syntactic unit that refers to a thing or a set of things. For example, in (6) and (7), the noun phrases are we, each other, John and Bill, and again each other. With these definitions, we can write a tentative rule for what each other refers to: (11) Each Other Reference Rule Each other can refer only to noun phrases that are inside the smallest clause containing it. In the tricky cases, (4-5), the rule works fine: it requires that each other refer to I and they respectively. This can be seen graphically for (5) if we make a diagram, using arrows to show legal and illegal reference. [We believe [they like each other.]S]S ok impossible Cases (1)-(3) are easy: there is only one noun phrase for each other to refer to, and the rule permits this. Notice that in a sentence with just one clause, but two noun phrases in addition to each other, there will be two possibilities for what each other might refer to: (12) [We wrapped the ropes around each other.]S ok ok This is just what our rule predicts. Because of this, the sentence has two possible meanings. There are some further relevant data, which are perhaps syntactically the most interesting: (13) [We consulted two detectives in order [to find out about each other]S]S (14) [They seem to us [to like each other]S]S Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 4 These sentences are mysterious: it looks like there is no noun phrase at all that occurs inside the smallest clause containing each other (other than each other itself). But consider the meaning of the sentences: someone is doing the finding out in (13), namely, “we”, and someone is doing the liking in (14), namely “they”. Thus, the peculiar clauses to find out about each other and to like each other appear to have implicit noun phrases. They have a meaning, but they’re not pronounced. For purposes of analyzing explicitly, let us fill them in: (15) [We consulted two detectives in order [(we) to find out about each other]S]S (16) [They seem to us [(they) to like each other]S]S With the implicit subjects filled in, we can explain what is going on. The Each Other Reference Rule needs slight revising: (17) Each Other Reference Rule (revised) Each other can refer only to noun phrases (including implicit noun phrases) that are inside the smallest clause containing it. Here is an analytic diagram for sentence (15): [We consulted two detectives in order [(we) to find out about each other]S]S ok impossible We will do more on this kind of rule later. The major gap in the analysis as given so far is that we haven’t said anything about what causes the implicit noun phrase to take on a particular meaning—for instance, why does the implicit noun phrase in (15) have to mean we, and not two detectives? This would lead us into a different area of English grammar, covering the implicit noun phrase behavior of in order to and many other grammatical constructions. For now, the point is this: knowing English means that you “know” the Each Other Reference Rule, in an intuitive sense. But it does not mean that you know it explicitly. Much of the work of linguistics consists of trying to make implicit knowledge explicit. The method is much the same as in other sciences: we gather data, formulate hypotheses, test the hypotheses against the data, revise the hypotheses, gather more data, and so on. Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 5 ——————————————————————————————————————— Study Exercises for “each other” Answers at end of readings. Study Exercise #1 This sentence is ambiguous: My sister and I gave our parents books about each other. Explain each possible meaning and illustrate it with a diagram (brackets and arrows) like the ones given above. Study Exercise #2 This sentence is ambiguous: Bill and Fred persuaded Alice and Sue ( ) to buy telescopes in order ( ) to find out more about each other. For example, in one reading, you could continue: “In fact, as it turned out, Bill succeeded in finding out more about Fred, but Fred did not succeed in finding out more about Bill.” In the other reading, you could continue, “In fact, as it turned out, Alice succeeded in finding out more about Sue, but Sue did not succeed in finding out more about Alice.” For each meaning, fill in the implicit subjects shown with ( ). Then draw diagrams for the reference of each other. (So you’ll end up with two diagrams.) Study Exercise #3 For this sentence: My parents tell my sister and me every day to write books about each other. there’s only one meaning: “My parents tell my sister every day to write a book about me and tell me every day to write a book about my sister.” It can’t mean “My mother tells my sister and me every day to write a book about my father and my father tells my sister and me every day to write a book about my mother.” Explain why, giving diagrams for both the possible and the impossible meaning. Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 6 4. The field of linguistics With this background, here is a (somewhat narrow) definition of the field of linguistics: it is the study of the (largely implicit) knowledge people have when they speak a language. Some of the subfields of linguistics are the following: syntax semantics morphology phonology study of rules for forming sentences study of rules for meaning study of rules for forming words study of rules of pronunciation In all cases, the “rules” are of the kind known implicitly by native speakers, not the kind learned in school. Linguistics has two other major subfields that also involve rules but are not as directly focused on them: phonetics, which studies how sounds are produced and perceived, and historical linguistics, which studies how languages change. Linguists attempt to arrive at explicit knowledge of all the world’s languages. I should point out that this task will never be completed. First, there are over 8000 different languages, many of which are spoken in remote areas of the world. 1 More important, the amount of explicit knowledge contained in just a single language would fill a whole library. Linguists find it both frustrating and astonishing that a small child can acquire implicitly in just a few years the same knowledge that takes decades of hard work for linguists to figure out explicitly. Linguists are also interested in developing a general theory of language; a theory of the properties that all languages share. These are called linguistic universals. Finding universals is also challenging; many linguists have the experience of having proposed a linguistic universal, only to find out later on about languages that don’t fit in. MORPHOLOGY 5. Orientation In linguistics, “morphology” means “the study of word structure.” We’re interested in the structure of individual words, as well as the grammatical principles whereby words are formed. Some of the terminology used here is probably familiar to you. The stem of a word is its core, the part that bears its central meaning. Thus in undeniable, the stem is deny; and in insincerity the stem is sincere. Material that is added to the stem, thus modifying its meaning in some way, consists principally of prefixes and suffixes. The suffix -able is prefixed to deny to form deniable 2 ; and the prefix un- is added to the result to obtain undeniable. Often, multiple prefixes and suffixes 1 2 The best directory to the world’s languages is the Ethnologue, on line at http://www.ethnologue.com/. We’ll ignore the change of y to i, a convention of English spelling. Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 7 can be added to the same stem, producing ever longer and more elaborate words: undeniability, hyperundeniability. Stem, prefixes, and suffixes are the building blocks from which words are assembled. The term used for such building blocks by linguists is morpheme, often defined as follows: • A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that bears a meaning. Thus, un-, deny, and -able are morphemes; deniable is not a morpheme because it can be split; de and ny are not morphemes because they are meaningless. We can start with a bit of notation. Words are shown broken into their morphemes with hyphens: un-deni-abil-ity. And prefixes and suffixes are shown with hyphens to identify them as such: prefixes like un-, suffixes like -ity. You can think of the hyphen as the bit of imaginary “glue” with which a morpheme attaches to the stem. 6. Two Kind of Morphology Most linguists acknowledge at least a rough distinction between two kinds of morphology: word formation vs. inflectional morphology. We’ll start with inflectional morphology. Inflectional morphology is grammatical morphology. Here are some examples to start, from English: • tense on verbs (present tense jumps, past tense jumped) • number on nouns (singular cow, plural cows) • a small amount of person and number agreement in verbs (She sings. vs. They sing.) English is actually not a very good language for studying inflectional morphology, because it doesn’t have all that much of it (Mandarin is a similar case). But other languages, such as Swahili, Russian, or Turkish, have a great deal, and students of these languages can spend years getting through it all. 7. Morphological Analysis When they encounter an unfamiliar language, linguists usually begin their work by carrying out a morphological analysis. This involves gathering data, determining what morphemes are present in the data, and writing the rules that form the words from the morphemes. There are no fancy methods for doing this; basically one must scan a collection of morphologically similar words and determine which phoneme sequences remain the same whenever the meaning remains the same. We will do this now for a fairly simple case, namely a fragment of the nominal morphology (=morphology for nouns) in Turkish. Here are the data: 1. el ‘hand’ ev ‘house’ zil ‘bell’ Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 8 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. eli ele elde elim elimi elime elimde elin elini eline elinde elimiz elimizi elimize elimizde eliniz elinizi elinize elinizde eller elleri ellere ellerde ellerim ellerimi ellerime ellerimde ellerin ellerini ellerine ellerinde ellerimiz ellerimizi ellerimize ellerimizde elleriniz ellerinizi ellerinize ellerinizde ‘hand (object)’ evi ‘house (object)’ ‘to (a) hand’ eve ‘to (a) house’ ‘in (a) hand’ evde ‘in (a) house’ ‘my hand’ evim ‘my house’ ‘my hand (object)’ evimi ‘my house (object)’ ‘to my hand’ evime ‘to my house’ ‘in my hand’ evimde ‘in my house’ ‘your hand’ evin ‘your house’ ‘your hand (object)’ evini ‘your house (object)’ ‘to your hand’ evine ‘to your house’ ‘in your hand’ evinde ‘in your house’ ‘our hand’ evimiz ‘our house’ ‘our hand (object)’ evimizi ‘our house (object)’ ‘to our hand’ evimize ‘to our house’ ‘in our hand’ evimizde ‘in our house’ ‘your (plur.) hand’ eviniz ‘your (plur.) house’ ‘your (pl.) hand (obj.)’ evinizi ‘your (pl.) house (obj.)’ ‘to your (pl.) hand’ evinize ‘to your (pl.) house’ ‘in your (pl.) hand’ evinizde ‘in your (pl.) house’ ‘hands’ evler ‘houses’ ‘hands (object)’ evleri ‘houses (object)’ ‘to hands’ evlere ‘to houses’ ‘in hands’ evlerde ‘in houses’ ‘my hands’ evlerim ‘my houses’ ‘my hands (obj.)’ evlerimi ‘my houses (obj.)’ ‘to my hands’ evlerime ‘to my houses’ ‘in my hands’ evlerimde ‘in my houses’ ‘your hands’ evlerin ‘your houses’ ‘your hands (obj.)’ evlerini ‘your houses (obj.)’ ‘to your hands’ evlerine ‘to your houses’ ‘in your hands’ evlerinde ‘in your houses’ ‘our hands’ evlerimiz ‘our houses’ ‘our hands (obj.)’ evlerimizi ‘our houses (obj.)’ ‘to our hands’ evlerimize ‘to our houses’ ‘in our hands’ evlerimizde ‘in our houses’ ‘your (pl.) hands’ evleriniz ‘your (pl.) houses’ ‘your (pl.) hands (obj.)’ evlerinizi ‘your (pl.) houses (obj.)’ ‘to your (pl.) hands’ evlerinize ‘to your (pl.) houses’ ‘in your (pl.) hands’ evlerinizde ‘in your (pl.) houses’ zili ‘bell (object)’ zile ‘to (a) bell’ zilde ‘in (a) bell’ zilim ‘my bell’ zilimi ‘my bell (object)’ zilime ‘to my bell’ zilimde ‘in my bell’ zilin ‘your bell’ zilini ‘your bell (object)’ ziline ‘to your bell’ zilinde ‘in your bell’ zilimiz ‘our bell’ zilimizi ‘our bell (object)’ zilimize ‘to our bell’ zilimizde ‘in our bell’ ziliniz ‘your (plur.) bell’ zilinizi ‘your (pl.) bell (obj.)’ zilinize ‘to your (pl.) bell’ zilinizde ‘in your (pl.) bell’ ziller ‘bells’ zilleri ‘bells (object)’ zillere ‘to bells’ zillerde ‘in bells’ zillerim ‘my bells’ zillerimi ‘my bells (obj.)’ zillerime ‘to my bells’ zillerimde ‘in my bells’ zillerin ‘your bells’ zillerini ‘your bells (obj.)’ zillerine ‘to your bells’ zillerinde ‘in your bells’ zillerimiz ‘our bells’ zillerimizi ‘our bells (obj.)’ zillerimize ‘to our bells’ zillerimizde ‘in our bells’ zilleriniz ‘your (pl.) bells’ zillerinizi ‘your (pl.) bells (obj.)’ zillerinize ‘to your (pl.) bells’ zillerinizde ‘in your (pl.) bells’ We have here three columns, indicating inflected forms of the three nouns meaning “hand”, “house”, and “bell”. Abbreviations and grammatical conventions are as follows: • “plur.” or “pl.” abbreviate “plural”. • “your (pl.)” is second person plural. Here, as a possessive, it means “belonging to you, there being more than one of you.” Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 9 • (object) or (obj.) means that that form would be used as the object of a verb. Thus, if one were to say in Turkish something like “I saw my hand”, one would use #3, eli. 3 8. Breaking up the words into morphemes The search, as always, is for invariant form paired with invariant meaning. In the first column, every single form begins with the sounds /el/ and has a meaning involving “hands”. It seems inconceivable that “hand” could be anything other than /el/, or that /el/ could be anything other than “hand”—note in particular the first line, where /el/ by itself means “hand” by itself. The columns for “house” and “bell” are completely identical to the column for “hand”, except that where column has /el/, columns 2 and 3 have /ev/ and /zil/ are stems. It is plain that /ev/ means “house” and /zil/ means “bell”. Moving on, we can compare: 1. el 2. eli 3. ele ‘hand’ ‘hand (object)’ ‘to (a) hand’ Subtracting out /el/ from the second and third forms, it appears that /-i/ and /-e/ must be suffixes. We can confirm this by casting an eye over the remainder of the data: /-e/ “goes together” with the English word “to” given in the translations; and likewise /-i/ with “(object)”. The /-e/ and /-i/ suffixes apparently denote the grammatical role that the noun plays in a Turkish sentence, a phenomenon called case. Let’s briefly digress with the basics of case. • Case is fundamentally an inflectional category of nouns (though often adjective and articles agree with their noun in case. • Case tells us, intuitively, who is doing what to whom — it identifies the basic semantic roles of the participants in a clause. In many languages, “Man bites dog” is Mannominative bites dog-accusative”, and “Dog bites man” is “Dog-nominative bites manaccusative.” Nominative and accusative are probably the two most common cases. • Case is not the only way to show who is doing what to whom. In languages with no case, or ill-developed case systems (English), the work done by case is taken over by strict word order and by prepositions. 4 • Some typical cases in languages (each language is different in its cases and their usage): 3 Thus the reference source on Turkish I’m using gives the sentence Beş adam heykel-i kırdi five man statue-accusative broke ‘Five men broke the statue’ 4 Still other ways exist—in Tagalog, much of this information is given using prefixes or suffixes on the verb. Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 10 Nominative, usually for subjects of sentences or the citation form of a word Accusative, usually for objects of verbs Dative, conveying the notion of “to” in English: I gave the book to the student. Locative, conveying the notion of “at”, “in”, “on”, etc. There are many other cases; Finnish is analyzed as having fifteen. This isn’t really that remarkable, since many of these are simply that way of expressing notions that are expressed by prepositions. 5 In Turkish: /-e/ is the suffix for the dative case /-i/ is the suffix for the accusative case /-de/ is the suffix for the locative case. Inspecting the data in rows 21-40, it is plain that every plural noun has the suffix /-ler/. Lastly, there is a set of possessive suffixes, which express essentially the same information as what in English is expressed by possessive pronouns like my and your. 6 There are four possessive suffixes present in the data(Turkish has more, but these are not included here.) -im -in -imiz -iniz ‘my’ ‘your’ ‘our’ ‘your-plural’ We can classify the possessive suffixes on the dimensions of person and number. Number is simply the distinction between singular vs. plural. Person takes (as a first approximation) three values: • “First person” refers to pronouns and grammatical endings that involve the speaker, either alone or with others. Thus in English I is a first-person singular pronoun, we is first person plural. • “Second person” refers to pronouns and grammatical endings that involve the hearer, either alone or with others. In Spanish tú is a second-person singular pronoun, used to address one person, and vosotros is a second-person plural pronoun, used to address more than one person. 7 5 6 Or their counterpart, postpositions, which follow their object noun phrase. Their usage is not quite the same, because if there is a noun possessor, you use the suffix as well. Thus, in English, we say (for example) Ayşe’s bell; but in Turkish Ayşe-nn zil-si, which is literally Ayşe’s bell-her; similarly biz-im zil-imiz, literally “us’s bell-our”. Standard English doesn’t make the distinction between singular and plural in the second person; though many regional dialects have a special plural pronoun, “yall”, used whenever the addressee is plural. 7 Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 11 • “Third person” refers to pronouns and grammatical endings that involve neither the speaker nor the hearer. Thus he/she/it are third-person singular pronouns, they third person plural. Once we’ve found all the parts, we can restate the original data, putting in hyphens to separate out the morphemes. I’ll do this just for the “hand” forms. I’ve also add a morphemeby-morpheme translation, also separated out by hyphens; this is called a gloss. Glosses are meant to clarify structure, rather than give an idiomatic reading. Gloss 1. el 2. el-i 3. el-e 4. el-de 5. el-im 6. el-im-i 7. el-im-e 8. el-im-de 9. el-in 10. el-in-i 11. el-in-e 12. el-in-de 13. el-imiz 14. el-imiz-i 15. el-imiz-e 16. el-imiz-de 17. el-iniz 18. el-iniz-i 19. el-iniz-e 20. el-iniz-de 21. el-ler 22. el-ler-i 23. el-ler-e 24. el-ler-de 25. el-ler-im-i 26. el-ler-im-e 27. el-ler-im 28. el-ler-im-de 29. el-ler-in 30. el-ler-in-i 31. el-ler-in-e 32. el-ler-in-de 33. el-ler-imiz 34. el-ler-imiz-i 35. el-ler-imiz-e 36. el-ler-imiz-de ‘hand ‘hand-acc. ‘hand-dative ‘hand-locative’ ‘hand-1 sg. ‘hand-1 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-1 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-1 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-2 sg.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-1 plur.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-loc.’ ‘hand-2 plur.’ ‘hand-2 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-2 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-2 plur. -loc.’ ‘hand-plural’ ‘hand-plural-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-loc.’ Idiomatic translation ‘hand’ ‘hand (object)’ ‘to (a) hand’ ‘in (a) hand’ ‘my hand’ ‘my hand (object)’ ‘to my hand’ ‘in my hand’ ‘your hand’ ‘your hand (object)’ ‘to your hand’ ‘in your hand’ ‘our hand’ ‘our hand (object)’ ‘to our hand ‘in our hand’ ‘your (plur.) hand’ ‘your (pl.) hand (obj.)’ ‘to your (pl.) hand’ ‘in your (pl.) hand’ ‘hands’ ‘hands (object)’ ‘to hands’ ‘in hands’ ‘my hands (obj.)’ ‘to my hands’ ‘my hands’ ‘in my hands’ ‘your hands’ ‘your hands (obj.)’ ‘to your hands’ ‘in your hands’ ‘our hands’ ‘our hands (obj.)’ ‘to our hands’ ‘in our hands’ Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 12 37. el-ler-iniz 38. el-ler-iniz-i 39. el-ler-iniz-e 40. el-ler-iniz-de ‘hand-plural-2 plur.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-loc.’ ‘your (pl.) hands’ ‘your (pl.) hands (obj.)’ ‘to your (pl.) hands’ ‘in your (pl.) hands’ 9. Classifying the suffixes and discovering order It is useful at this point to sort all the suffixes discovered according to their function: Case endings /-i/ /-e/ /-de/ accusative dative locative Possessive suffixes /-im/ /-in/ /-imiz/ /-iniz/ Plural /-ler/ In particular, if you scan the data (now greatly clarified with hyphens and glosses), you can find two important generalizations: • No word contains more than one possessive suffix, or more than one case. • Suffix order is invariant, and goes like this: Plural precedes Possessive Suffix precedes Case. With a word processor, it’s not hard to prove these relationships by lining up the relevant morphemes into columns with tabs. Here the data once more, displayed in this way. ‘my’ ‘your’ ‘our’ ‘your-plural’ Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 13 Stem 1. el 2. el 3. el 4. el 5. el 6. el 7. el 8. el 9. el 10. el 11. el 12. el 13. el 14. el 15. el 16. el 17. el 18. el 19. el 20. el 21. el 22. el 23. el 24. el 25. el 26. el 27. el 28. el 29. el 30. el 31. el 32. el 33. el 34. el 35. el 36. el 37. el 38. el 39. el 40. el Plural Poss. Case i e de ‘hand ‘hand-acc. ‘hand-dative ‘hand-locative’ ‘hand-1 sg. ‘hand-1 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-1 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-1 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-2 sg.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-2 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-1 plur.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-1 plur.-loc.’ ‘hand-2 plur.’ ‘hand-2 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-2 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-2 plur. -loc.’ ‘hand-plural’ ‘hand-plural-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-1 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-2 sg.-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-1 plur.-loc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-acc.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-dat.’ ‘hand-plural-2 plur.-loc.’ ‘hand’ ‘hand (object)’ ‘to (a) hand’ ‘in (a) hand’ ‘my hand’ ‘my hand (object)’ ‘to my hand’ ‘in my hand’ ‘your hand’ ‘your hand (object)’ ‘to your hand’ ‘in your hand’ ‘our hand’ ‘our hand (object)’ ‘to our hand ‘in our hand’ ‘your (plur.) hand’ ‘your (pl.) hand (obj.)’ evinizi ‘to your (pl.) hand’ ‘in your (pl.) hand’ ‘hands’ ‘hands (object)’ ‘to hands’ ‘in hands’ ‘my hands’ ‘my hands (obj.)’ ‘to my hands’ ‘in my hands’ ‘your hands’ ‘your hands (obj.)’ ‘to your hands’ ‘in your hands’ ‘our hands’ ‘our hands (obj.)’ ‘to our hands’ ‘in our hands’ ‘your (pl.) hands’ ‘your (pl.) hands (obj.)’ ‘to your (pl.) hands’ ‘in your (pl.) hands’ im im im im in in in in imiz imiz imiz imiz iniz iniz iniz iniz ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler ler i e de i e de i e de i e de i e de im im im im in in in in imiz imiz imiz imiz iniz iniz iniz iniz i e de i e de i e de i e de Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 14 Study exercise #4 Reexamine these suffixes and propose a different—finer-grained—analysis. /-im/ /-in/ /-imiz/ /-iniz/ ‘my’ ‘your’ ‘our’ ‘your-plural’ 10. The next step The next step will be to turn this all into a system of rules—i.e., the (part of) rules of Turkish inflectional morphology. This will require a bit of formal development and is the subject of next class. ——————————————————————————————————————— Answers to Study Exercises Study Exercise #1 My sister and I gave our parents books about each other. One meaning: “My sister gave our parents books about me and I gave our parents books about my sister.” Other meaning: “My sister and I gave our mother a book about our father and gave our father a book about our mother.” [ My sister and I gave our parents books about each other. ]S ok ok Study Exercise #2: Bill and Fred persuaded Alice and Sue [(Alice and Sue) to buy telescopes in order [(Bill and Fred) to find out more about each other]]. ok impossible impossible Linguistics 20, Fall 2008 Class 1: What is Linguistics? p. 15 Bill and Fred persuaded Alice and Sue [(Alice and Sue) to buy telescopes in order [(Alice and Sue) to find out more about each other]]. ok impossible impossible Study Exercise #3 The crucial part is to identify the clauses and the implicit subject, which must mean “my sister and me” and not “my parents”. [ My parents tell my sister and me every day [ (my sister and me) to write books about each other ]S]S impossible ok Study Exercise #4 /-imiz/ is really /-im/ + /-iz/, and /-iniz/ is really /-in/ + /-iz/. We can make this work if we give the suffixes slightly more abstract meanings: /-im/ doesn’t mean “my”, but more generally, “first person”. /-im/ doesn’t mean “your”, but more generally, “second person”. Then, /-iz/ means “plural possessor”. Singular possessor is indicated by including no suffix.